If the extend of your document management needs are nothing more than a place to store files and organize them with folders: you may not need a fully-featured Document Management System. When starting a law firm its important to identify, very early on, whether or not you’ll need a true DMS. In my asterisk above I warned that many Practice Management solutions list “Document Management” as a feature, but do very little compared to what a full-fledged Legal Document Management System (DMS) does for you. Next up when starting a law firm: Document Management. When it comes to starting a law firm, the major components of legal practice management software, from which you’ll want to determine what you need, are: Then–you can closely evaluate these few, and ultimately arrive at which product is the best fit for you when starting a law firm.
Doing this will narrow the list from ten to a short list of one or two. Or at least–these “big 10” make up 90% or better of the market (the remaining 10 being lesser-known or niche products.) What I do when I advise law firms is to determine, from the list below, which features they need, and which they don’t. There are, for argument’s sake, about 10 major Practice Management suites used by law firms today. Others focus more on “back-off” functions such as billing, business and trust accounting. They vary pretty wildly: Some focus on “front-office” functionality such as calendaring, docketing and managing the particulars of each case. It’s easy to assume that all legal practice management solutions are the same or similar–but you’d be wrong.
They’ll spend hours poring over one software solution, only to realize later that it doesn’t do accounting, something that was in their must-have list. And–I’ve (unfortunately) witnessed law firms waste a lot of time evaluating the wrong solutions.
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I frequently advise lawyers that are starting a law firm on how to evaluate, select and implement the right software for their firm all the time. There are cloud-based solutions, server-based solutions, private clouds, software for big firms, for small firms and everything in between. You’ll need some software to track all of that–even if your freshly-minted practice will be just you and your laptop until the end of time.Īs you no doubt know, there are tons of choices when it comes to legal practice management software. What is your practice, after all, if not a collection of clients, matters, contacts and appointments. This is called Practice Management software, and it serves as the hub of your practice. Whether you plan to build an aggressive firm that does a lot of litigation, or an even-paced, small transactional firm, you’ll need software that you can use to keep track of your clients, contacts and calendar.
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